Anita Chikkatur received her master's and doctoral degrees from the Education, Culture and Society program at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BA in Sociology and Education at Swarthmore College, after which Anita taught English at a junior high school in a small town in Japan for two years. Her dissertation research, conducted at an urban public high school, examined processes of racialization as an integral part of creating American national identity, a project being reconfigured as a result of new immigration patterns. Her research and teaching interests include student and teacher perspectives on race, gender and sexuality and issues of diversity and difference in educational institutions.

Jeff Snyder, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies, is a historian of education who studies the twentieth-century United States. A Carleton alumnus, Professor Snyder majored in Psychology and concentrated in Educational Studies. He holds an EdM in Learning and Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a PhD in the History of Education from New York University.

Before pursuing graduate studies, Professor Snyder taught English to Speakers of Other Languages to students of all ages and ability levels in the Czech Republic, France, China, India, Nepal and the United States. He teaches the following courses: Will This Be On the Test? Standardized Testing and American Education (EDUC 100), Introduction to Educational Studies (EDUC 110), History of American School Reform (EDUC 245), Fixing Schools: Politics and Policy in American Education (EDUC 250) and Multicultural Education (EDUC 338).

Professor Snyder's work explores the intersections between the history of education and broader trends in U.S. cultural and intellectual history. His research interests include African American education during the Jim Crow era; radical and experimental education in the 1960s and 1970s; and standardized testing, from the turn of the twentieth century to today. His articles, essays and book reviews have appeared in academic journals such as the Journal of African American History,History of Education Quarterly and Teachers College Record as well as newspapers and magazines such as Boston Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New Republic. He is completing a book called Making Black History: Race, Culture and the Color Line in the Age of Jim Crow, under contract with the University of Georgia Press.

Cathy Tower Oehmke is a Visiting Assistant Professor. She received her BA from Wellesley College in Psychology and Education, her Master’s Degree in Literacy Education from the University of Maine, and her PhD in Educational Psychology from Michigan State University. In addition to her work at Carleton, Cathy teaches fourth and fifth grades at Prairie Creek Community School in Northfield.

Ann Leming obtained a BA in Psychology/Sociology from Westmont College and a MA in Special Education from the University of Utah. She has been teaching at St. Olaf since 1983. At St. Olaf, she teaches The Exceptional Child course and supervises student teachers each fall term, and teaches in Thailand during spring term. Since 2001, she has co-directed the Spring Semester in Thailand program which is affiliated with Chiang Mai University. In this capacity she directs the service-learning internship program for the program. Professor Leming joins the educational studies department at Carleton each spring term for Teaching Exceptional Students.